Abstract
This paper unpacks Sterling’s concept of spimes and outlines how it can be developed as a lens through which to speculate and reflect upon the future of more preferable and sustainable technological products. The term spimes denotes a class of near future, sustainable, manufactured objects, and unlike the disposable products, which permeate our society today, a spime would be designed so that it can be managed sustainably throughout its entire lifecycle. This would have the goal of making the implicit consequences of product obsolescence and unsustainable disposal explicit to potential users. With the current rhetoric associated with the so-called Internet of Things promoting existing production and consumption models, the time is right to explore Sterling’s concept in greater depth. In doing so, this paper examines the meaning of the term spimes, distinguishes the concept from today’s Internet-connected products and posits design criteria for potential near future spime objects. The paper concludes with an initial evaluation of a speculative design fiction created by the author – the Toaster for Life – which seeks to embody several of the spime design criteria in order to facilitate audiences in considering the unsustainable people-product relationships which define present day behaviour, and also aid the author in reflecting upon the design fiction process itself.
Highlights
As populations continue to grow in size and affluence, so too does the consumption of material goods and services
This paper considers whether we can develop spimes as a lens through which to reflect upon more sustainable technological product futures, whilst critiquing the unsustainable people-product relationships that define today
I argue, that Stage 4 of his exemplar has yet to come to fruition, and it is this stage we will discuss as the attribute that separates a spime object from an Internet of Things (IoT) product
Summary
As populations continue to grow in size and affluence, so too does the consumption of material goods and services. Subpar materials and purposely failing to incorporate effective means for repair, upgrade and recycling, the lifecycles of most electronic products are designed to be brief. They are further curtailed by routine changes to functionality, aesthetics and software, resulting in older devices becoming quickly outmoded by newer designs (Slade, 2007). Since the 1960s, deference to Moore’s Law throughout industry and academia has led to continual updates to computer software and hardware Both the cost and scale of components such as resistors and semiconductors have significantly reduced, and global wireless networks and infrastructures have become almost ubiquitous. The result is that in recent decades we have seen computational capability spread beyond conventional screened devices to a plethora of other products. Dourish and Bell (2011) note how over the last 25 years, ubiquitous computing and Moore’s Law have in many ways consolidated their position as the dominant rhetoric throughout computing research and industry
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